Table saws are valuable tools used for a variety of tasks, such as cross-cutting wood and plastic, and ripping long boards into narrow strips. While there are a variety of table saw designs, most table saws include a circular saw blade mounted on an arbor that is turned by one or more belts that are driven by a motor. The saw blade extends through an opening in the surface of a saw table, on which surface the workpiece rests and is supported. The depth of cut is varied by adjusting the amount of the blade that extends above the table surface such that the higher the blade extends above the table, the deeper the cut that is made in the material. Angle of the cut with respect to the table surface is typically controlled by adjusting the angle of the arbor to which the blade is affixed.
Additionally, table saws nearly always include a fence or guide that extends from a side of the table nearest the operator to a side furthest from the operator, and is oriented to be generally parallel to a cutting plane of the blade. The rip fence is used to guide the workpiece during the process of making a “rip cut,” which is a cut made parallel to a grain of the wood, and guides the workpiece as the workpiece is fed onto the saw blade. A distance of the fence from the blade may be adjusted, thereby determining a location of the cutting surface on the workpiece. Accurate and precise positioning of the workpiece is important to accurate and precision cutting tasks.
However, while conventional rip fences provide some adjustability with respect to a distance at which it is disposed from a cutting plane of the saw blade, the parallelism of the rip fence with the cutting plane of the saw blade can sometimes be compromised depending upon the particular design of the rip fence mechanism. Unfortunately, lack of parallelism or “trueness” not only accounts for inaccurate and imprecise cutting, it may result in a flawed workpiece that exhibits “burning” as the saw blade cuts at an unintended angle. Moreover, lack of parallelism may also result in a dangerous condition wherein the workpiece is kicked back toward the tool operator.
Accordingly, precision alignment of the fence and its parallelism with the cutting plane of the saw blade are of critical importance in making precise and accurate cuts in the workpiece.